NASA photographs show eastern basin of Aral Sea totally dry

Isabel Cocoli in Voice of America: New NASA photographs taken by satellite show Central Asia' once-vibrant Aral Sea shrinking to levels possibly not seen in centuries. The images taken in August by the Terra satellite show that the sea's eastern basin, on the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, completely empty, the first time in modern times, said Philip Micklin, a well-known geographer and professor emeritus of Western Michigan University and an Aral Sea expert.

"And it is likely the first time it has completely dried in 600 years, since medieval desiccation associated with diversion of the Amu Darya [river] to the Caspian Sea," he told NASA. By some accounts, the destruction of the sea is considered one of the world's worst environmental catastrophes.

Once the fourth-largest sea in the world, the Aral has been shrinking since the 1960s when the Soviet Union undertook a major irrigation project to supply the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

The region's two main rivers — the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya — were tapped to irrigate water-intensive crops like cotton and others in the arid Central Asian desert. The desert bloomed in many places, but at the expense of the lake, which has shriveled, destroying ecosystems, decimating a vibrant fishing industry and leaving dozens of communities suffering from poverty and environmentally-induced disease.

Micklin said lower rain and snow fall in the mountains to the east this year  considerably reduced the flow into the Amu Darya feeding the lake. Uzbekistan continues to use the river for its economically-important cotton industry.

As the water receded, the sea has split into two separate sections: the North, or Small, Aral Sea, located within Kazakhstan; and the South, or Large, Aral Sea. The latter split into western and eastern basins.

NASA image of the Aral Sea on August 19, 2014

Quandary over abandoned Soviet croplands

Quirin Schiermeier in Nature: The Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 heralded the end of many unprofitable communist industries, along with unprecedented changes in land use. As the free-market economy took hold, large swathes of Soviet cropland were abandoned by farmers and reclaimed by nature, causing a headache for today’s policy-makers. Should it be replanted to feed hungry mouths, or left wild to act as a substantial sink for polluting carbon dioxide?

The issue resurfaced this month after a study suggested that the area of cropland abandoned since 1990 in western Russia, Belarus and Ukraine has been severely underestimated. According to figures based on regional sowing statistics, more than one-quarter of former agricultural land in the region is idle. This equates to about 31 million hectares — or an area the size of Poland — and is more than three times the area estimated in 2009 by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization mainly on the basis of land-use observations from space.

...“The Soviet Union strived for complete agricultural self-sufficiency,” says Schierhorn, and this meant farming even low-quality land. He says that grain production in fertile regions is still substantial, but has dropped sharply in less fertile spots. This is mainly because, after 1990, there was a massive decrease in Soviet animal stock, so less need for animal feed, he adds.

Many sites once used to produce feed could today support wheat varieties and other cereals, Schierhorn says. If fully replanted, he estimates the region’s idle land could yield some 90 million tonnes of grain per year — about 35 million tonnes more than Russia’s wheat production in 2013. Recultivating only a portion of the land would buffer Russia against its notoriously erratic yields...

Children digging up frozen potatoes on a collective farm in the Donets Basin, 1933